


Fifty Shades of Fifty Shades

by MrProphet



Category: Fifty Shades of Grey - All Media Types
Genre: Mild Language, Multi, Parody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 09:22:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10806291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Fifty Shades of Fifty Shades

Fifty Shades of Fifty Shades  
  
“I know you’re having trouble with the new book,” my agent said to me, in that voice which always warns me she’s about to have a ‘brainwave’ and suggest something totally insane. I was not to be disappointed in this case as she followed with: “You should write something grounded in a proven sub-genre.”  
  
“Like dianetics?” I suggested, but she shook her head.  
  
“The copyrights for that are sewn up tight,” she assured me. “You’re going to have to come up with something more generic. Could you create your own cult?”  
  
“I doubt it,” I replied, although I like to think I could, if I wanted to.  
  
“Shame, but my idea will be just as good.”  
  
I made the mistake of asking the obvious question and she replied: “Fifty Shades.”  
  
“That’s not a genre!” I argued, but she was not to be moved. “It’s successful,” she assured me. “A license to print money.”  
  
I was pretty sure it was a license to print toilet paper, but she does know her markets and I was struggling with the new book. It would be good to have something out there, so I said: “I’ll give it a go.”  
  
A month later I gave her the initial treatment, and that's where the creative process really got complicated.  
  
 _The lights swirled around me, casting long shadows from the sharp edges of the gleaming, sterile surfaces. I struggled against the restraints on my arms and legs, but could not move more than a few inches in any direction. My pulse was racing; adrenaline surged through my body and a strange exhilaration took hold of me. My captor’s hands played a symphony among the surgical instruments on the table, each metallic chink sending a shiver of thrilled terror through my body.  
  
My captor moved towards me, a long, silver probe in its slender fingers. My body tensed, my buttocks clenching, but deep in the subterranean core of my being something welcomed the impending violation. Trapped on an alien spaceship at the mercy of this black-eyed being, I had never felt more free._  
  
“It’s not that I don’t like it,” my agent assured me, setting aside the sample chapter. “It’s just… not quite what we were going for.”  
  
“I don’t know what you mean,” I deadpanned.  
  
“Just… Can we try again?”  
  
“Of course,” I agreed, and we shelved _Fifty Shades of Roswell Grays_. (1)  
  
"I really have my concerns," she admitted when I submitted my second treatment. "We could have some problems with the... I mean, it's a touchy subject and..."  
  
"Is it the religious aspect?"  
  
"A combination of that and... It's just that the gay issue..."  
  
I was mildly incredulous. "I'm offering a story about a Rabbi who perverts the divine act of creation to fashion a sex slave out of virgin river mud and animate it with the stolen divine power of a holy word, and you’re worried I’ll be seen as gay bashing?”  
  
“Does the Rabbi have to be gay?”  
  
“I told you when we started,” I reminded her, “I am not comfortable writing this sort of material at all, but as a male author I am definitely not going to do it with a female victim.”  
  
“Protagonist,” she corrected automatically, “and what about a female Rabbi? They have them these days?”  
  
“My liberal sensibilities would weep to portray a female Rabbi as a desperate vamp who has to resort to a corruption of the qabbala to get laid, and besides, that’s orthodox magic. I refuse to compromise the integrity and realism of my work by having a woman create a golem.”  
  
I don’t think she understood my stand of principle on this one, but we agreed that _Fifty Shades of Clay_ (2) might not be our winner and I took another stab at it.  
  
 _Her rheumy eyes watched with aqueous intensity as I stumbled up and down the length of the abandoned common room, hands clutching the frame to which she had bound me, and the rubber of the incontinence trousers clinging uncomfortably to my legs and constricting my most intimate parts.  
  
“You enjoy the power you have over them, orderly,” she chuckled in her dry whisper. “We will see how you feel when the boot is on the other foot.” She rose, leaning on her stick, and my heart skipped a beat when I saw her reach for the catheter._  
  
“Too... medical,” was the opinion, and thus went _Fifty Shades of May to December_ (3).  
  
Moving on, we swiftly ruled out _Fifty Shades of Kray_ (4) as too likely to attract legal - or worse, illegal - action from the East End gangland community, and _Fifty Shades of Cray_ (5) as being of too limited appeal. “We’re selling to the middle-aged woman who read the original and wants to wield the whip; not supercomputer nerds.”  
  
Thankfully, she turned down _Fifty Shades of Chalet School_ (6) at the title, because that would have been uncomfortable to write, but she insisted the next one be a full treatment.  
  
 _The choke chain bit into my neck as she pulled it tight, and the leather of the collars bit into my wrists as I twisted futilely against the bars of the cage. She flung her body against mine and the cage rocked, driving the cats within into a state of frenzy, leaping and clawing at the skin of my back through the bars. I could feel my blood running from a dozen small scratches and I wondered if any family who adopted these poor, abandoned animals would find them more difficult to handle now they had tasted human flesh._  
  
“You don’t like it,” I ventured, and shelved _Fifty Shades of Stray_ (7). Later we would set aside _Fifty Shades of Spay_ as essentially the same idea in a veterinarian’s clinic. I probably shouldn’t have reused the scene with the Alsatians in the treatment.  
  
 _With growing horror I gazed into the dead, black eyes of the Herald of Gozer as she held me, suspended with one hand.  
  
Winston looked up at me in disdain. “When someone asks you to fuck a god: You. Say. Yes!”_  
  
Sadly, _Fifty Shades of Ray_ (8) was written off as another law suit waiting to happen before I got to use either ‘He slimed me’ or ‘don’t cross the streams’ in a scene. And I say sadly, but I mean ‘thankfully’.  
  
Next I hit a bit of a Scots poetry kick, first with _Fifty Shades Gang Aft Agley_ (9) - turned down for the same reason as _Fifty Shades of Dray_ (10) and _Fifty Shades of the Road to Mandalay_ (11); apparently the Fifty Shades-reading world isn’t ready for semi-anthropomorphised animal sex, be it from mice with a plough fetish, squirrels in their nest or unusually musical escaped circus elephants - and then with my epic _Fifty Shades O’er the Silvery Tay_ (12), which achieved the near-impossible and was deemed too poorly written.  
  
 _On the spars of the new bridge o’er the silvery Tay  
Am I bound with ropes from day to day  
For the cruel delight of a lass whose brains  
Are turned tae fire by the clatter of trains._  
  
The world shall mourn the loss one day, but I learned my lesson and went back to basics.  
  
 _I couldn’t help but admire the hard efficiency with which she pinned my arms using my own umbrella, fixing it in place with my tie._  
  
 _“There’s no point struggling,” she assured me as she pushed me back onto the hard, plastic seat and hitched up her skirt, “although I won’t object if you try.”_  
  
 _She loomed over me and her face looked almost ghastly in the yellow light from the arrivals board, which told us that the next bus would be in 13 minutes; just as it had been for the last half hour._ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Delay_ ) (13)  
  
 _I couldn’t breathe; the sodden cloth clung to my face, water filling my mouth and making me choke. Her voice seemed to come from very far away as she said: “You’re strong.” I felt her thighs press against my sides and the point of her combat knife traced the muscles of my torso. “I like that; and you may make the Special Forces yet.”_ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Green Beret_ ) (14)  
  
 _I held my breath as she upended the cup and the stream of scalding tea spilled over my chest._ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Earl Grey_ ) (15)  
  
 _With slow, methodical turns of the rope, the peasant woman bound me tighter and tighter to the old, iron bed frame. She has a sure hand and I knew I could never pull free, although from the creaks and groans it emitted I suspected I could, in an emergency - such as an attack by either Batista‘s troops or my asthma - break the bed.  
  
She bent her head and bit my ear, hard, whispering: “Talk to me of class struggle.”_ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Che_ ) (16)  
  
 _To my surprise, she caught hold of me, this slip of a girl, and forced me to my knees on the hard, stone floor.  
  
“Your grace,” I protested, but she silenced me with a slap.  
  
“Hush, Lord Guildford,” she chided, “and do not think that because you are to be my husband, you can question your Queen!”_ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Lady Jane Grey_ ) (17)  
  
 _She put her foot on my shoulder, digging the spike of her heel into the meat between the blade and the ball until I gasped in pain. “Open wide,” she commanded. “It’s your favourite; yogurt coated raisins.”  
  
I obeyed, and without leaning down she dropped a small, pale nugget into my waiting mouth. I cried out in pain as my tongue caught fire! The witch had switched the raisins for wasabi peas!  
  
“Say thank you,” she purred, leaning a little more weight onto my shoulder._ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Graze_ ) (18)  
  
By this point, I was convinced that my agent would give up, but not a bit of it. I nearly ended up with a commission to write the Lady Jane Grey one, but they decided to offer the treatment to Philippa Gregory to work up instead - I don’t know if she took up the offer or not - slipping me a welcome cheque for five hundred pounds, with a bonus for letting them keep my name off the finished product (well, I wasn’t going to say no).  
  
 _I screamed as the skin of my buttocks burned on the hot surface of the bain marie. “Don’t be such a baby,” she mocked, “or it’s the fish fryer for you!”_ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Fillet_ ) (19)  
  
 _Over and over the whip found its mark on my back and I cried out in pain, thrashing against the leather thongs which bound my wrists. Roughly she gripped my hair and dragged my head back, wedging the shaft of the whip between my teeth to gag me. “You’re scaring the horses,” she hissed._ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Neigh_ ) (20)  
  
“I like it,” my agent said of ‘Neigh’. “Very Jilly Cooper.” If I’d ever had any pretensions of being an artist, this project was stripping them away without mercy. I passed quickly onto a rural bodice ripper in which my victim-protagonist was staked out in a field and forced to pleasure his mistress before the combine harvester got to them, confident that the proposed snuff ending would put the mockers on _Fifty Shades of Hay_ (21).  
  
 _The rosary was tight around my wrists as the scourge descended, over and again. “Our Father,” I murmured and the lash struck harder.  
  
“You know the words, Father Robert.”  
  
Tears of ecstasy ran down my face as I whispered: “Forgive me Mother Superior, for I have sinned.”_ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Pray_ ) (22)  
  
I had another very Catholic one, set in a monastery, but _Fifty Shades of Grace_ (23) fell victim to the same perceptions as _Clay_ ; apparently non-consensual B&D is acceptable between a man and a woman - in either direction - but between homosexuals it’s gay bashing. I wonder if there’s a more serious satire in this: _Fifty Shades of R vs Brown_.  
  
 _“Oh, no, Mr Big-Shot Director; I think it’s time for you to sprawl across the motorcycle.”_ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Michael Bay_ ) (24)  
  
 _Once the rules were established, it wasn’t so bad. I knew what was expected of me and what sort of behaviour would earn me punishment. From there we moved on to learning tricks.  
  
After another month I was in high enough favour to be allowed to sleep on the bed._ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Stay!_ ) (25)  
  
 _She pushed me down, foot on the back of my neck, grinding my face into the cool, smooth, herringboned wood of the floor._ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Parquet_ ) (26)  
  
“I’m beginning to suspect that you’re not taking this entirely seriously,” my agent accused.  
  
“I’m starting to suspect that you don’t care,” I replied. I’d finished my difficult second novel the month before and early predictions were very strong.  
  
 _Fifty Shades of Grey’s Anatomy_ (27) was a medical school farce that would have read like an X-rated version of Doctor in the House. I thought it had mileage, but my agent insisted that it ran ‘a serious risk of being confused with the TV show’. Likewise, as much as she savoured the idea of bondage with pirates, _Fifty Shades of Parlay_ (28) risked attracting the ire of the mighty House of Mouse.  
  
 _I felt helpless as she wrapped the floral garland around my wrists, binding them together behind the post, and it felt good._ (An excerpt from _Fifty Shades of Lei_ ) (29)  
  
 _She smiled down at me with adoring cruelty. “You do look darling in that tutu,” she assured me._ (An excerpt from _Fifty Shades of Ballet_ ) (30)  
  
 _The next night, she donned a Nazi uniform and made me dress as Liza Minelli._ (An excerpt from _Fifty Shades of Cabaret_ ) (31)  
  
 _My knee was throbbing painfully from the first blow when she hooked the ladle under my chin and tipped my face up to meet her cold, dead gaze. “So; you have a problem with my school meals?”_ (An excerpt from _Fifty Shades of Gravy_ ) (32)  
  
We read through the treatments for _Fifty Shades of Fae_ (33) - a faerie kidnap story, like Tam Lin with tassels - and _Fifty Shades of Graf_ (34) - a complicated digression into 19th century Prussian aristocratic politics peppered here and there with hardcore bondage scenes between Ferdinand von Zeppelin and a frankly anachronistic lady engineer - over a bottle of wine at her place. I can only speculate how the evening would have ended if she’d reversed the order and not finished with _Fifty Shades of Decay_ (35); not to put too fine a point on it, a piece of zombie porn and a total mood killer.  
  
She’s right of course that a complete manuscript of _Fifty Shades of Passion Play_ (36) would have got me lynched, even by the Church of England, but _Fifty Shades of Mystery Play_ (37) was just the right side of aggressively blasphemous, and had a man dressed as a dragon in it, being humiliated and abused by a princess and a cross-dressing St George.  
  
On May the 8th I presented a tale of torture and liberation in _Fifty Shades of VE Day_ (38), in which a Nazi torturess tries to break her lone prisoner before the liberating forces arrive. It attained new levels of sordidness which I blush to recall, and so no extract is presented here.  
  
 _“She wants to see you,” one of the elves confided. The others looked away awkwardly, almost pityingly, and even Santa could not meet my gaze._ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Sleigh_ ) (39)  
  
 _She flung me hard against the wall, following with a powerful kick, then dragged me first to my feet and almost immediately off them, holding me off the ground. Her mandibles flexed enticingly and her dreadlocks danced with her laughter as she hefted me over her head. “You are one ugly motherfucker,” she chuckled._ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Prey_ ) (40)  
  
"If you write one about the aliens, you're dumped," my agent warned me. Suddenly, I didn't think she meant as an author.   
  
_It was then, as the first blow struck home, slicing into my hand and drawing blood, and a wicked, hungry light gleamed in her eyes, that I realised she wasn’t really looking to practice the balcony scene at all._ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Play_ ) (41)  
  
 _In the end, it wasn’t the knives that broke him; it wasn’t the baseball bat or the chainsaw. It wasn’t the traps or the ropes. It was when she took away his mask that she broke him._ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Slay_ ) (42)  
  
 _She wound the chord around the neck of the doll, one turn after another, and the breath froze in my chest. I tried to reach for the doll, but one look at the bag around her neck, the bag that held my soul in bondage, robbed me of my strength and will to act._ (An extract from _Fifty Shades of Gris Gris_ ) (43)  
  
 _I was pinned, the legs of the theodolite piercing my shirt and driving into the ground beneath me. My right arm was trapped beneath her knee, and the trowel in her hand pressed underneath my chin. “Now, Professor; let’s talk about what we’re going to uncover here.”_ (An extract from _Fifty Spades of Grey_ ) (44)  
  
At the launch for my third book, I gave my agent three more treatments: The Arthurian romp of _Fifty Shades of Grail_ (45); exam board shenanigans in _Fifty Grades of Grey_ (46); and the Carry On style catering antics of _Fifty Shades of Tray_ (47).  
  
“Are you just trying to get to fifty?” she asked.  
  
“I think I might be.”  
  
The next two were quite a contrast. _Fifty Shades of Curds and Whey_ (48) was in many ways an attempt to tackle my arachnophobia, while _Fifty Shades of Flay_ (49) was a gory slasher inspired by Clive Barker’s Hellraiser and was, in my agent’s terms, ‘a bit much’.  
  
“One more,” she said. “Maybe this one should be more in your comfort zone.”  
  
“How do you mean.”  
  
“You said you weren’t happy writing a female protag… victim in a Fifty Shades style novel. What about if we added a little more consent to the formula?”  
  
I thought for a moment, moved closer to her and admitted: “I think I’m still more comfortable with a male voice, but I think I could work a lot better with a less antagonistic female lead.”  
  
She smiled at me. “And what about a title?”  
  
Extract, from _Fifty Shades Done_ (50).


End file.
